4 ms·

Well stated. I recently went through (the recordings of) MIT’s intro course for electrical engineers, in which somewhere the professor says students may wonder

by wrs 8y ago

Well stated. I recently went through (the recordings of) MIT’s intro course for electrical engineers, in which somewhere the professor says students may wonder why they have to do all this calculus and learn FET models and so on — in real life don’t you just wire chips together? And he points out that MIT degrees are for the people who make the chips.

booleandilemma 8y ago
It’s kinda like that Asimov story, Profession: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)
stcredzero 8y ago
he points out that MIT degrees are for the people who make the chips. You never know when background knowledge and first principles might come in handy. One of my favorite YouTuber practical engineers has this story about going on a boat trip. The new coffee maker on board was freaked out by the noise from the inverter and kept shutting itself off. A total disaster! There would be no coffee the whole trip. So he turned on the blender while making the coffee, and the coffee maker started working. How did he know? He knew what kind of motor was in the blender, and knew its windings would increase the inductance of the circuit the kitchen appliances, filtering out the higher frequencies put out by the cheap inverter. This guy isn't an electrician. ("Elekchicken") His day job is just to put pieces of "industrial lego" together -- just like how so many programmer jobs now are mainly about gluing libraries together. But he never shies away from knowledge of first principles, and he demonstrates all the time why such knowledge is valuable.
- sheetjs 8y ago
  Background knowledge and first principles also come in handy with more mundane work. Arguably our most prominent contribution to OSS (outside of our own projects) was in React. We're credited in the codebase when the approach was used: https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/v16.0.0/src/renderers/shared/utils/adler32.js#L17 https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/v16.0.0/src/renderers... As discussed in the original PR https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/4400 https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/4400 the original checksum used a naive adler-32 algorithm, but with some basic math you can find a much more efficient implementation that eliminates most of the mod operations without risking a hidden deoptimizing overflow. It's not everyday that you get to use your background knowledge, but when you do it feels great!
- leetbulb 8y ago
  I'm intrigued. What channel? I greatly appreciate this type of intuition / problem solving. AvE is one of my favorite.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    AvE
    - leetbulb 8y ago
      Ah, must have missed that video :P Thanks!
- gymshoes 8y ago
  Share the channel please
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    AvE
Swizec 8y ago
This is the best, most succinct, answer to do you or don’t you need an eng degree I’ve ever seen. Thank you
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Do you want a 200k/yr 50hr/week job? If so, Get the bestest degrees. If you want a 110k/yr to 1B/yr job, self taught with some confidence is my recommendation.
  - esoterica 8y ago
    Jeff Bezos went to Princeton, Zuckerberg and Gates to Harvard, Sergey Brin and Evan Spiegel to Stanford. The bestest degrees seem like a decent option for the xB/year category too.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      With the exception of Bezos, everyone on your list dropped out of their degree before finishing it - although to be fair to Brin, he already had a degree from Maryland before dropping out of his PhD.
      - carlmr 8y ago
        Dropping out doesn't mean they didn't already get a lot of benefit from their schooling. Just that they realized they didn't need the piece of paper and could do the rest on their own. But especially the fundamentals is where I think most of the value of a uni degree is.
        kd0amg 8y ago
        Yeah, there's a huge difference between "so-and-so left a PhD program to start a company based on his research" and "so-and-so read a web framework tutorial instead of going to college."
      - 8y ago

by wrs 8y ago

booleandilemma 8y ago

It’s kinda like that Asimov story, Profession: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

stcredzero 8y ago

he points out that MIT degrees are for the people who make the chips. You never know when background knowledge and first principles might come in handy. One of my favorite YouTuber practical engineers has this story about going on a boat trip. The new coffee maker on board was freaked out by the noise from the inverter and kept shutting itself off. A total disaster! There would be no coffee the whole trip. So he turned on the blender while making the coffee, and the coffee maker started working. How did he know? He knew what kind of motor was in the blender, and knew its windings would increase the inductance of the circuit the kitchen appliances, filtering out the higher frequencies put out by the cheap inverter. This guy isn't an electrician. ("Elekchicken") His day job is just to put pieces of "industrial lego" together -- just like how so many programmer jobs now are mainly about gluing libraries together. But he never shies away from knowledge of first principles, and he demonstrates all the time why such knowledge is valuable.

sheetjs 8y ago
Background knowledge and first principles also come in handy with more mundane work. Arguably our most prominent contribution to OSS (outside of our own projects) was in React. We're credited in the codebase when the approach was used: https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/v16.0.0/src/renderers/shared/utils/adler32.js#L17 https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/v16.0.0/src/renderers... As discussed in the original PR https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/4400 https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/4400 the original checksum used a naive adler-32 algorithm, but with some basic math you can find a much more efficient implementation that eliminates most of the mod operations without risking a hidden deoptimizing overflow. It's not everyday that you get to use your background knowledge, but when you do it feels great!
leetbulb 8y ago
I'm intrigued. What channel? I greatly appreciate this type of intuition / problem solving. AvE is one of my favorite.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  AvE
  - leetbulb 8y ago
    Ah, must have missed that video :P Thanks!
gymshoes 8y ago
Share the channel please
- stcredzero 8y ago
  AvE

Swizec 8y ago

This is the best, most succinct, answer to do you or don’t you need an eng degree I’ve ever seen. Thank you

robertAngst 8y ago
Do you want a 200k/yr 50hr/week job? If so, Get the bestest degrees. If you want a 110k/yr to 1B/yr job, self taught with some confidence is my recommendation.
- esoterica 8y ago
  Jeff Bezos went to Princeton, Zuckerberg and Gates to Harvard, Sergey Brin and Evan Spiegel to Stanford. The bestest degrees seem like a decent option for the xB/year category too.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    With the exception of Bezos, everyone on your list dropped out of their degree before finishing it - although to be fair to Brin, he already had a degree from Maryland before dropping out of his PhD.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      Dropping out doesn't mean they didn't already get a lot of benefit from their schooling. Just that they realized they didn't need the piece of paper and could do the rest on their own. But especially the fundamentals is where I think most of the value of a uni degree is.
      - kd0amg 8y ago
        Yeah, there's a huge difference between "so-and-so left a PhD program to start a company based on his research" and "so-and-so read a web framework tutorial instead of going to college."
    - 8y ago